


The Joy of Adventure

by TheMarvelousMadMadamMim



Series: Finding Joy (Hackle Summer Trope Challenge 2.0) [1]
Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Hackle Summer Trope Challenge, Post season three, Roadtrip, week one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 08:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19422598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMarvelousMadMadamMim/pseuds/TheMarvelousMadMadamMim
Summary: Ada and Hecate decide to take a trip.Hackle Summer Trope Challenge 2019. Week One: Roadtrip.Story 1/8





	The Joy of Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> What up, witches. Last year, I ended up telling a single story over the arc of the Hackle Summer Trope Challenge. I'm doing the same thing this year, so buckle up. I have no clue where we're going.

Hecate Hardbroom did not agree with Ada Cackle’s decision to invite nonmagical girls to join the academy. That did not mean that she didn’t _support_ that decision, though. After all, it was in the job description—both professional and personal.

So when Headmistress Cackle announced her decision, Miss Hardbroom was a good deputy and nodded in solemn agreement, cutting quick eyes at the rest of the staff and ladening her look with enough venom to ensure that no one objected, at least not in front of the students.

And later, when Ada was simply Ada, when they were alone and simply wives, Hecate curled around her and softly whispered, “You are doing a brave thing.”

She couldn’t lie and say that everything would be alright, or even that she was fully certain that Ada had made the right choice—she certainly hadn’t made the _safest_ choice, but Hecate Hardbroom had come to learn that _safe_ and _right_ were not always the same thing. But she could be honest in saying that Ada was brave, that she admired her bravery and the courage of her conviction, even now.

They dozed off like that: fully clothed atop the covers, Hecate’s body curled around Ada’s, her nose buried in the tangle of blonde hair at the nape of Ada’s neck, happy to feel each other’s breathing, reassured by the weight and the warm of the body beside them. They stirred awake again close to midnight, groaning softly and slowly making their way to actual bedtime preparations.

Ada sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at her wife, who had rolled onto her back and was staring at the ceiling.

“Do you think….” Ada wasn’t even sure what she wanted to ask, how to begin unravelling the tangled ball of fear and uncertainty in her mind. “What if….”

“Whatever will happen, will happen,” Hecate kept her gaze locked on the ceiling, but her fingers slid across the comforter to lightly intertwine with Ada’s. “And whatever we face, we face together.”

“Always.” A smile rippled across Ada’s lips. She felt a small frisson of warmth in her chest—she’d been so close to losing this, to losing this woman and all they had built together. It still made her bones melt with relief at the thought that they were still here, still safe, still continuing into something more, always and together.

Hecate gave a curt nod of agreement. She worried her bottom lip, expressive eyebrows twitching and lifting and swooping as she calculated some potential outcome. Ada quietly watched her for a few beats, smiling softly at the face she loved so well before quietly asking, “What is it?”

“Are you…we need to be prepared,” Hecate’s voice became stronger, quicker, surer. A sign that she was trying to hide fear behind bravado, Ada knew. “We need to be ready to face the worst possible outcome.”

“Which is?” Ada felt her lungs tighten.

Now Hecate’s eyes flicked over to meet her gaze, pain and concern etching their edges. “We lose the school. And the girls—the girls get sent away.”

Ada ducked her head as she considered the idea. Cackle’s was one of the few tuition-free schools left. If it was shut down, many families would not have the financial resources to afford continuing education for their daughters. To say nothing of the nonmagical girls who might potentially be here by then.

“Or we’re replaced and the school goes into someone else’s care,” Hecate’s voice was soft, regretful. This school was Ada’s legacy, a large and at-times-unwanted family heirloom, but still just as much a part of her as her DNA. Having someone else claim the academy might actually be worse than having it shut down completely.

Ada must have been silent for too long, because Hecate lightly squeezed her hand, as if to bring her back to the present moment.

“That’s just the worst-case scenario,” Hecate gently reminded her. Ada nodded in agreement. _Hope for the best, prepare for the worst._

“At least,” the blonde took a small breath to steady herself. “At least it would be easier, now. With Indigo back.”

Hecate made a small noise of agreement. In the past, Hecate’s confinement had been an issue—granted, Ada had told her long ago that she’d lift the spell the moment Hecate asked, but Hecate had never asked, because Indigo was still there, still stone, still in need of Hecate’s protection and penance. Now Indigo was alive and well again, and Hecate had finally asked the question. The spell itself had been lifted, and now she and Ada could go and do as they pleased, should anything happen.

“We should take a holiday,” Ada suggested.

“Where to?” Hecate asked so easily, as if this was something they did all the time. Ada loved her for it.

“I don’t know,” Ada admitted. She released Hecate’s hand and slid off the bed, snapping her fingers to switch into her nightgown and robe before sitting at her vanity. “We have four weeks that we could be gone—there’s not much to do before Selection Day, and most of the prep work could be done in a matter of hours, with a bit of magical intervention.”

Hecate propped herself up on her elbows, watching Ada’s reflection in the vanity mirror. “Four whole weeks seems a bit…excessive.”

“We could start with a simple weekend trip,” Ada amended as she ran a brush through her hair. She realized that should have been her first suggestion—something small, something manageable, something to acclimate Hecate to the world outside the academy grounds. It would benefit her just as much as it did Hecate—for years now, she’d only left the academy when it was absolutely necessary. When she and Hecate had needed a holiday, they’d simply gone off to one of the cottages at the edge of the academy’s grounds. It had been deep enough in the forest that they couldn’t even seen Cackle’s sitting atop the hill, and the seclusion had been a welcome respite.

Hecate hummed in agreement. She stretched her long legs again, magicking away her heels and stockings to flex and wiggle her toes. Even at a distance, her shockingly baby pink toenails were so visible that Ada had to smile.

Hecate caught Ada’s adoring expression in the mirror, and her throat hitched. They’d walked through another fire today, and were already walking straight towards the flames of a new one. _How many times can you put your head in the lion’s mouth before he bites?_

“Come back to me,” she said, half-plea, half-command. Her eyes were shining and Ada turned around, her own expression filled with relief and worry, too.

“I don’t want to think about what might be,” Hecate admitted. Her body began to tighten and react as Ada rose to her feet and slowly made her way back to the bed, nightgown rippling from the sway of her hips. “I just want to focus on what is, what’s right now.”

Ada merely hummed in agreement, moving across the mattress to meet her wife in a kiss. When she broke away for air, Hecate was decidedly less clothed and already pulling her back in for more.

* * *

When Ada awoke the next morning, she heard the soft shift of pages being turned—not surprisingly, Hecate was already awake, propped up by pillows as she read. Ada rolled over, smiling sleepily at the sight. Hecate had stolen her reading glasses again. Vain thing, refusing to admit she needed her own now. But Ada rather liked the look of Hecate wearing her glasses, so she never really complained.

A rather large tome was floating at reading-level, pages flipping without the physical assistance of Hecate’s hands. Again, Ada grinned. Her wife was such a witch, constantly in touch with her magic—people might whisper how lazy Hecate was for always using magic, even when it wasn’t entirely necessary, but her constant usage was what made her so powerful. Ada tilted her head slightly, getting a clear view of the book’s cover.

 _An Illustrated Atlas of the World._ So Hecate was taking the getaway idea seriously.

Hecate had obviously noticed that Ada was awake. She reached out, fingertips lightly grazing through Ada’s hair in absentminded adoration.

“I have a few suggestions,” she didn’t bother with preamble.

“As do I,” Ada leaned in, just enough to give the side of Hecate’s hip a quick nip through the fabric of her nightgown. Hecate’s fingers tightened their grip on Ada’s hair.

“I was thinking Scotland,” Hecate continued. “For a start. Just a few days. But it’s a rather long way to travel by broom, I would think.”

“We can take the train,” Ada suggested. Her left hand had already slipped beneath the covers, pulling up the hem of Hecate’s gown and finding the still sleepy-warm skin beneath. Hecate shivered slightly in response. She opened her legs wider, slightly, a silent invitation. Ada continued, both with her verbal and nonverbal lines of thought, “It'll be good practice, since we’ll soon be inundated with nonmagical girls and their parents, next term.”

Hecate gave a small huff, and Ada wasn’t entirely sure if it was from derision or simply a reaction to Ada’s hand slowly slipping up her thigh.

“Ada Cackle, sometimes I think you take an unholy delight in tormenting me.” Again, Ada couldn’t tell if the torment was the idea of dealing with nonmagical people or the slowness of Ada’s ascent up her skirt.

“It’s not really torment, is it?” Ada feigned innocence. She appealed to Hecate’s pedantic side. “After all, torment implies that there’s no promise of _relief_. Anything else is just…teasing.”

The book vanished, the glasses stayed. Hecate looked down at her wife, one eyebrow arching in unspoken sarcasm. “And how, exactly, does one provide relief from a flood of nonmagical people?”

“Oh,” Ada sat up slightly, just enough so that she could slip Hecate’s gown further up, out of the way. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

Now Hecate was grinning like a madcap. “I’m sure you will.”

* * *

Hecate had never performed an invisibility spell outside the Academy—even as a free-roaming young girl, she’d never used the spell because back then, it had always been in place. The world had changed since then. It felt odd, stilted, performing magic without feeling the pull of the academy around her, without feeling the residue of a thousand past witches swirling around her spells, fortifying her own abilities.

She felt Ada’s hand gently on her elbow, felt Ada’s magic fusing with her own to bolster the spell as Hecate stared at the people whirling around them, suitcases and back packs and odd fashions and a thousand different little distractions.

“Alright?” Ada’s voice was soft, somehow grounding Hecate without bursting the bubble of her awe. Hecate gave a quick, small nod.

A pack of young travelers rushed by, obviously about to miss their train, and the two witches shifted back to avoid being caught in the bustle. It was enough to end Hecate’s sense of wonder. Yes, people were all the same, regardless of how much time had passed or how little magic they may possess—forever obsessed with themselves, never heeding anyone around them (in their defense, the women they almost rammed into _were_ invisible to their eyes, but Hecate didn’t seem to think that was a valid excuse).

“Shall we?” Hecate turned towards the main platform, shifting slightly so that Ada could take the lead. She used to come here as a child, but only to watch the nonmagical people. She knew nothing about actually being here as a patron of the railways.

Ada easily looped her arm through Hecate’s and moved forward. It was such a small thing, but a relief. Though most of the staff at Cackle’s either outright knew or greatly suspected the nature of their personal relationship, they’d decided very early on to keep up the appearance of being nothing more than particularly devoted colleagues. _To avoid accusations of bias_ , Hecate had said. When Ada had pointed out that she happened to be very biased when it came to her then-lover and now-wife, Hecate had sniffed, _well of course, but no one wants to be **accused** of it_.

Ada smiled at the memory. She’d teased Hecate on it, more than once. But she still understood her wife’s reasoning. It would be all too easy for the Council or the Great Wizard himself to decide that they were no longer fit to run the school together, to use their personal closeness as an excuse, to claim their decisions were made by love-clouded judgment whenever those decisions didn’t run perfectly in-line with whatever the Council wanted, completely ignoring the fact that Hecate and Ada generally had very different methodologies to begin with, and when they reached an accord on a particular line of action, it had been done with full consideration of all possible outcomes.

That was the burden of being female, Ada knew. That other people could denigrate every decision made to some kind of emotional instability, and with a flick of the wrist completely invalidate any choice, without any further consideration for how meticulously that choice had been made.

To the nonmagical eye, the far side of the platform was simply empty, a solid wall of nothingness. To the magical beings who pushed through the portal and into the hidden platform, however, it was its own mini station, with ticket booths and benches and timetables. The track itself only seeped out of the ground whenever a train approached. Thankfully, this was the last stop on this particular line, and not many people were taking the train today.

Despite the considerably smaller crowd, Hecate’s anxiety increased. They were surrounded by their own kind now, which meant they could be seen. Part of her—a very irrational part—was certain someone would somehow recognize her, would sidle up to say _shouldn’t you still be trapped at Cackle’s, what are you doing free?_ It was ridiculous; very few knew about her confinement to begin with, but she still felt odd, being able to walk around the world again. Still felt...wrong, like some kind of escaped prisoner with a sign tattooed on her forehead, proclaiming her wrongness to the rest of the world.

Ada must have sensed her tension, because her hand slid up to the crook of Hecate’s arm, thumb lightly brushing against the inside of Hecate’s elbow, slow and measured and reassuring. It seemed perfectly impossible to love her wife any more than she already did, yet Hecate swore her heart simply grew a little more, to accommodate the rush of affection.

Truth be told, Ada was fairly nervous herself—nervous about making their train, nervous about the hundred little mishaps that could happen in travel, nervous about Hecate, nervous about leaving the academy after another year filled with crises, nervous about someone spotting them and realizing that they were together, taking a vacation _together_ , and somehow using the knowledge to negatively impact their lives. But goddess above, she’d put on the bravest face possible for Hecate’s sake. She looked up to see Hecate smiling sweetly at her, and found that it was incredibly easy to smile back. They purchased their tickets and sat on a platform bench to wait. Every minute, Ada could feel Hecate’s uneasiness lessen, and she couldn’t help but feel a swell of admiration for her wife.

There was a rule, which had been established years ago, when they took their first little trip to the cottage at the edge of the grounds: absolutely nothing related to the academy would be discussed during their time away. At the time, Ada had feared that the school might become their only common factor—it would be so easy to center every discussion in their lives around it, around their girls, and she’d dreaded the idea of losing herself, losing her lover, losing whatever new thing had been growing between them, losing it all to some kind of mundane little whirlpool where nothing else ever happened. She'd seen it happen to her mother, had seen Alma push away her own children at the demands of the school, and as always, Ada had vowed to be unlike that woman in every way. Thankfully her fears had been put to rest ages ago, but the no-work rule was still a rather wonderful invention.

It was exactly why Hecate was engrossed in explaining to her some new method for extracting oil from plant leaves, her expressive hands drawing pictures in the air as she described the system of vials and lines and burners, her eyes shining as she described the meticulous construction and the precision needed for each step. Hecate’s fingertips fluttered down an invisible hose, which was supposed to transport a concoction that helped the oil rise and separate from the boiling leaves. Ada’s throat tightened as she remembered those same fingertips playing along the line of her bare spine, just that morning. She forced herself to pay attention. Not that it was a hard task—when Hecate was excited about something, her fervor was palpable and catching. When something fascinated her, she described it in such a way that Ada felt just as fascinated by it, even if it was something that previously hadn’t interested her in the slightest.

Granted, Ada's fascination was heavily influenced by the way the subject made her wife's eyes shine, but still, Hecate had always been a convincing lecturer. In all honesty, it had been Hecate's fervent way of explaining potions that had first made Ada lean in, all those years ago. She still remembered, back when she'd first returned to teach at Cackle's, how often she'd found herself walking past the open door of the potions lab during her free period, to listen in on the young potions mistress discussing methodology with her fifth year students. At first, she'd told herself that she just liked hearing about the new methods. Then, as she'd gotten to know the prickly Miss Hardbroom, she'd told herself that she just liked hearing the juxtaposition between the strict way she approached the first years and the softer, more open tone she took with the fifth years. Eventually, she had to admit that perhaps she just liked the sound of the woman's voice, particularly when speaking about something she loved.

Hecate was still extolling the virtues of this new method when the train screeched into the station. Ada felt a ripple of satisfaction—in the ten minutes since they’d sat down, Hecate had become completely at-ease. She’d been more worried than she’d cared to admit, trying to predict how her wife would react to rejoining the outside world, and it was a relief to see that Hecate was adjusting so well.

They found an empty compartment (the benefits of being the last stop on the line) and settled in. As there had been no question of them not sitting side-by-side, Hecate gestured for Ada to take the seat next to the window.

“Don't you want to look out?” Ada asked, motioning to the view.

The corner of her wife’s mouth curled into a smirk, “I’ll be able to see over the top of your head quite easily.”

The blonde rolled her eyes over the unbelievable level of height superiority on display and took her seat. Hecate sidled up to her, still smirking.

The window was huge; it wasn’t as if Ada was actually blocking the view anyways. Still, she sat up as straightly as she could. Hecate realized what she was doing and hummed in amusement at her wife's attempts to prove a point ( _I'm not **that** short, thank you very much_).

“Completely unobstructed view,” she leaned in to whisper, even though they were the only ones in the compartment. She placed a quick kiss on the side of Ada’s head. Unbelievably patronizing. Still, Ada found herself smiling.

Soon the train was chugging along, and Hecate had the perfect excuse to turn slightly and lean further into her wife’s side, under the pretense of watching the countryside roll past.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” She ducked her head slightly, kept her lips closer to Ada’s ear than necessary.

“Quite,” Ada hummed in agreement. Hecate was fairly certain that they were both talking about the same thing—and neither were referring to the scenery.

Hecate was so close that Ada knew if she turned her head to look at her, their noses would be touching. Their bodies were warm and solid together, rocking in sync with the pull of the train. Ada’s hand easily slipped into her wife’s lap, giving a small appreciative squeeze of the thigh beneath her fingers. Hecate twittered slightly and shifted, trying to push more into Ada’s grasp—though if she moved much closer, she’d be in Ada’s lap.

Hecate’s hand came up to trill along the row of buttons on Ada’s traveling dress, an imitation of what she really wanted to do. The click of her nails across the enameled buttons was the only sound in the compartment, light and barely heard over the rumbling of the tracks. Hecate’s fingertip finally reached open skin, ghosting over the line of Ada’s collarbone and leisurely running up her neck.

“I love you,” she murmured, half-distracted. Ada could physically feel where her gaze was, right at the spot where Ada’s neck met her jaw, a place that had proven a favorite resting spot for Hecate’s lips.

Now Ada turned to face her wife, letting their noses brush as she quietly echoed, “I love you, too.”

She leaned forward, bringing them into a kiss. Hecate made a small hum of approval, her hand slipping to the other side of Ada’s neck, fingers sinking into Ada’s hair and pulling the woman further in.

Ada Cackle had to admit, she’d hoped that traveling with her wife would be an adventure. She just hadn’t expected it to quite this bold, quite so soon. But with a smile, she realized that was the best part of any adventure—all the unexpected joys along the way.

**Author's Note:**

> I think it was @cassiopeiasara who suggested Hecate painting her toenails pink for Ada in one of her works, and it's just always stuck with me. Headcanon credit where it's due!


End file.
